Investment

& Land
Conflicts
https://www.cmie.com/kommon/bin/sr.php?kall=warticle&dt=2016-05-03%2012:41:13&msec=480
https://www.livemint.com/Politics/djaa4hxQTklGR3lOws8hzJ/New-investments-in-India-plunge-to-14yearlow.html
A. Number of Projects; B. Value at Risk

394.7
378 345
692.9

2,348 2,129.2

1,049.8

2,709

Clearances Land Acquisition

Not Available Other Reasons
Vedanta Niyamgiri Case
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/indl-goods/svs/metals-mining/
niyamgiri-conflict-of-land-rights-and-economic-development/videoshow/
63764099.cms
POSCO Conflict
https://youtu.be/Y1lODRj_Eyo
Impact on Investments
•  Capital investments worth 3% of India’s gross domestic product
(GDP) were stalled due to land acquisition problems in 2001,
•  Non-performing assets and at-risk loans valued at ₹5.5 trillion,
because of conflicted land projects.
•  Land conflicts contributed to 8% of projects stalled by 2015,
•  14% of the announced projects during 2000-15 getting
bottlenecked.
•  Land-related conflicts in India impact investments worth over ₹
12 trillion, reports another study.
 State Industry

Civil
Community Society
Exploring Reasons
1. State Perspectives
 State’s Dilemma
•  Justice and Sustainability agenda
•  Incomplete Reform, Decentralization and Digitization
•  Peer Pressure
•  VGGT, SDG
•  Growth Agenda
•  State’s Mediation

•  State facilitation
•  IDCO and IPICOL
•  Industrial Land Bank
•  State Coercion (Use of Force)
•  Misses and Lapses
•  No land Bank for Land to Landless
•  Gender not added to Bhulekh Land Records
•  Exclusive digitization of land records and updating through HiTech Survey Vs Un-surveyed area,
lack of seamless integration of FRA, Women and Land to landless records, Missing CFR
Exploring Reasons
2. Industry perspectives
•  Procedures bureaucratic, complex & tedious
•  Land Tenure is External and/or state-concern
•  Negotiation and contact with National/State Governments
•  More an Economic Issue; not socio-cultural
•  Compensation & R & R
•  Possible to exclude people & society from land
•  Role of Non-State Actors
•  Land as a Capital
•  Needed for Growth
•  Competitive use; better return
•  Competitive (lower) land price; more the merrier
Exploring Reasons
3. Civil Society
Regime of Dispossession
Land acquisition/dispossession in Neo-liberal
times
•  Land- acquisition through coercion, material compensation, and
normative persuasion (for example, legitimacy); all often covertly or
overtly accompanied by Force
•  Liberalization era shift towards private investment-lead land transfers
for increasingly financial capital from state-led industrial and
infrastructural expansion
•  Land dispossession has become less and less developmental
•  India’s neo-liberal regime is politically tenuous and is
•  unlikely to be rescued by higher compensation.
In the case of the Mahindra World City SEZ in Rajasthan, this rate as 439%—including a profi t
of over Rs 2.5 crore per acre on land turned to residential use—based on 2011 prices (Levien
2012: 947–48).

In peri-urban Delhi, the Greater Noida Development Authority has been documented
acquiring land at Rs 820 per square meter and reselling it to developers at Rs 35,000 (Sood
2011).
Exploring Reasons
4. Community
 Investment- Tribal-Poverty-Commons-Nexus
•  90% of coal and >50% most other mineral reserves are located in the tribal regions
•  Among 50 top mineral producing districts of India, 60% located in 150 most backwards districts.
•  In Odisha, Keonjhar produces 21% of India’s iron ore has 60% population living BPL(below poverty line)
& Koraput, with around 40% of India’s Bauxite has 79% population BPL
•  CPR are more in these districts are ease to expropriate; projects prefer to go for more CPR with less
private land to downsize number of affected persons & avoid political and economic burdens
•  CPR formed 58% of the land acquired for NALCO in Koraput, while it was only 18% in non-tribal
Angul (Fernandes and Raj 1992)
•  Post-1990, more than 1/3rd land allotted by IDCO were public (Government) land, which
percentage is higher in the four industrialized districts where almost half the lands were allotted
Jajpur, Angul, Jharsuguda and Jagatsinghpur
•  60% of 1 million ha used for development during 1951-95 were CPR (Fernandes and Asif 1997)
•  ~ 13% area is
in the
Scheduled V &
VI Areas.
•  Conc. of forest
cover, and the
conc. of dams,
significantly
higher
•  90% of all
mineral wealth
comes from
states with
Scheduled
Areas.
Land conflicts by type of land involved
Commons/Govt lands in Odisha
NSSO (1998) : 11% of the state’s area with a per HH CPLR at 0.28 ha ( 50% of HH area - 0.58 ha)
De-facto common land in Odisha De jure Common Land as % total Village land
(as % to total Village land) (Gochar+ Gramya Jungle + Sarbasadharan)

Common
AbadJogyaAnabadi AbadAjogyaAnaba 7%
9% di
9%

Govt
23%
Rakshit
11%

SarbaSadharan
Private land 1%
Pvt
70% 70%

Census, 2001: de-facto commons to 38% of village

Draft National land Reform Policy, 2013 Definition : 31%
Excluding Forest land
 Common Land & Minerals
•  One third of 142 thousand ha of Forestland diverted since 1980 were for mining
•  Mineral based industries account for more than 80% of land allocated through IDCO (67,
000 ha during 1995-2013)

Mining
32%
Others
43%

Encroachment Defence Irrigation

& Forest Vill 3% Road, Railway & 13%
Conversion Transmission line
2% 7%
Exploring Reasons
LAND TENURE RISK?
Land Record
Customary Tenure
Exploring Reasons
Land Records
1. Record Updating : DILRMP Status (Nov, 2017)
Records computerized 86% & Maps digitized 46%
1. Record Updating : DILRMP Status (Nov 2017)
Final Map after resurvey generated in 2% villages
1. Unrecorded New Rights in Plenty:
Barriers Galore to Entitlements, Credit…..
•  Land Rights changes/transfers not registered
•  Changes/transfers registered but not mutated (converted to Records)
•  Land records created but not digitized/computerized & made online
•  Land records created but Maps not updated (only sketch prepared)
•  Land records computerized but maps not updated
•  Cadastral map digitized, not geo-referenced/not updated
•  Example: A tribal Village Study in Rayagada District (Gopikankubadi)
•  About 300 parcels in Cadastral Map digitized and available in Bhu-naksha
•  About 500 parcels in Computerized Land Records online Bhulekh database
•  >1000 parcels in ground, as per field Survey
 2. NEW RECORDS : FOREST RIGHTS
Potential & Achievement

SCOPE : 40 m ha forest land

in 1.7 million villages with
150 million people (about 25
million ST & OTFD)
This is an acknowledgement that this document is a compilation of information
from different authors, institutions and sources, put together for the purpose of
teaching.